Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [58]
Some of the neighbors brought dollars from their hidden stashes and exchanged them for Israeli currency to help the Zadoks. Everyone gave Val a letter to be mailed to South Africa or elsewhere when she was out of the country. Farewell embraces as Gideon finished painting the headlights of the car to comply with the blackout. He muscled the seabags into the trunk just as the sun set.
The four of them were suddenly standing by the Ford, looking at the cottage. They had barely settled in and it was over with. As they closed the doors, the situation hit them with a sickening thud. Gideon hesitated as though a last-minute reprieve might save them, then he switched on the engine.
The car probed into a suddenly blackened countryside, bypassing a Tel Aviv that no longer seemed to be there. He had taken the route a hundred times on the way to Jerusalem but never in darkness.
Gideon gripped the wheel tightly and strained to pick up any little familiar landmarks. The car suddenly banged into something and bucked hard. He had driven up and over a curb. A few minutes later they went off the shoulder of the road and barely missed sinking into a ditch. Val drove them out while Gideon pushed.
Good. A familiar straight road for a while. Val took the Uzi gun off her lap, set it on the floor, and wrote a list of things he had to do. The girls forced their way through The Little Brown Song Book.
There was once a man
With a double chin
Who performed with skill
On the violin,
And he play’d in time,
And he played in tune,
But he never play’d anything
But Old Zip Coon.
Old Zip Coon
He played all day,
Until he drove his friends away;
He played all night
By the light of the moon.
And he wouldn’t play anything
But Old Zip Coon.
Gideon slammed the brakes on. Jesus! He had almost dead-centered a donkey and cart. Fierce words were exchanged in Hebrew and English. No one understood the other.
“Come on back in the car, honey. We haven’t got time to get into a fight now,” she said.
“Shmuck!”
Just a song at twilight,
When the lights are low,
And the flickering shadows
Softly come and go.
He inched to a stop, apparently lost. Dammit! Seemed to be an intersection ahead. He walked up and found the road signs. Blessed relief. Lydda Airport—4km.
They were passed through the security gate and reached the parking lot just before nine o’clock, coming upon an eerie scene. The main lounge of the aged terminal was clogged with fleeing diplomats and their families. The place was lit by candle and lantern light casting a yellowish glow over piles of hastily packed suitcases and confused, disorganized humanity. Talk was in whispers, as though an enemy were listening. No one seemed to know anything.
Gideon carved out a place for Val and the girls and set out to find Rich Cromwell. He located him up in the tower. He flashed a false credential, one of a half dozen he carried, and shoved his way into the control room. The confusion there seemed as rampant as it was in the terminal. There had been word of American evacuation plans and a lot of unidentified blips were spooking the radar screens. The situation was worsened by the standoff between the Americans and Israelis. The Americans wanted no cooperation, not even data from Israeli patrol planes.
“Hi, Rich, how’s it going?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“It’s not exactly America’s proudest moment. Hard to tell whether the rats are deserting the sinking ship or the ship is deserting the sinking rats,” Gideon said sourly.
“Did you register?” Cromwell asked, ignoring the comment.
“No.”
“There’s a desk in the cafeteria. Tell them your name is on the CIA list. I’ll hunt you down in a while; I want to talk to you.” Gideon had been leery of the special treatment. He was certain that Cromwell was going to have one more crack at him for intelligence data. He didn’t like it.
Val had used her wits, packing a deck of cards, some jacks and a ball, and mini-chess and cribbage boards. She also had thrown together some sandwiches and fruit. The latter proved inspirational as the cafeteria had been stripped